Desiree by Annemarie Selinko
Since I saw Napoleon – only his mother now calls him Napoleone, the rest of the world speaks of him as Napoleon Bonaparte and speaks of hardly anything else – well, since I saw him that time in Paris I have never set eyes on him again. To this day no one in my family knows of that encounter. He married Josephine in the spring of the next year with Tallien and Director Barras as his witnesses at the ceremony, and as soon as he was married Napoleon paid all the widow Beauharnais’ dressmakers’ bills. Two days later he went off to Italy – as Commander-in-Chief! And within the next fortnight he had won six battles!
The sound of the dying man’s breathing has changed: it has become quieter. And his eyes, instead of being only half open, are wide open now. I called his name. But he did not hear me.
Yes, within a fortnight Napoleon had won six battles and the Austrians evacuated Northern Italy.
I can’t help remembering our evening talks by the hedge. So Napoleon has really founded States. The first he founded he called Lombardy, the last the Cisalpine Republic. He made Milan the capital of Lombardy and appointed fifty Italians to administer the State in France’s name. Overnight there appeared on all public buildings the words: ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. Then the people of Milan had to hand over a big sum of money, three hundred horses and their most beautiful works of art, and all that Napoleon sent to Paris, but of course not without deducting the pay of his troops which the Directors in the past had always left unpaid. Messrs Barras and Co. in Paris didn’t know whether they were on their heads or their heels. Money in the exchequer, Italy’s most beautiful horses drawing their carriages, and valuable paintings in their reception rooms! There was one painting in particular to which Napoleon drew the attention of Paris. It’s called ‘La Gioconda’ and its painter was a certain Leonardo da Vinci: there is a woman in it, Mona Lisa they say is her name, and this woman smiles with her lips closed. Her smile reminds me of Josephine’s. Perhaps Mona Lisa had bad teeth just like the widow Beauharnais.
At the end of it all something happened which no one had thought possible. As one knows, the French Republic had separated itself from the Church of Rome, and as a result the Roman Catholic clergy beyond our frontiers have always cursed the new France from their pulpits. But then suddenly the Pope approached Napoleon in order to conclude a peace treaty with France. When that came out people crowded into Etienne’s shop to listen to his story of how Napoleon years ago had confided to him his great plans. For he, Etienne, was not only General Bonaparte’s brother-in-law but also his very best friend …
I have been sitting with Duphot again for a while and held up his head a bit. But it’s no use. It doesn’t make his breathing any easier and he keeps on fighting for breath. I have wiped a drop of bloodstained foam from his mouth and I notice that his face is waxen yellow. The doctor whom I called in told me in broken French that it was an ‘interior hæmorrhage’ and then went back to Joseph and Julie. They, for all I know, may be talking about to-morrow’s reception …
Apparently even before the treaty with the Vatican had been concluded the Government in Paris had become uneasy. Why? Because Napoleon drafted and signed all agreements with the Italians whom he had ‘liberated’ himself without ever bothering to ask the Government whether the conditions he imposed were acceptable to it. That exceeded, so the Directors seem to have grumbled, the powers of a Commander-in-Chief, it had no longer anything to do with the conduct of the war but fell under the heading of ‘Foreign Policy’ and was of such importance that they would have to send professional diplomats out to his headquarters to advise him … At that Napoleon wrote out a list of names of men to whom, he suggested, they should give the title and powers of an Ambassador of the Republic and who should be despatched to Italy. The list was headed by the name of his brother Joseph. And that was how Joseph and Julie came to be here.
At first they had gone to Parma, then as Ambassador and Madame Bonaparte to Genoa, till at last they arrived in Rome. And, by the way, they had come here not directly from Marseilles but from Paris. For hardly had Napoleon become Military Governor of Paris than he wrote to Joseph that the capital offered him far better chances than a mere provincial town.
I can see now that whatever happens Napoleon will always find some profitable job or other for Joseph. At first it was the modest position of a secretary of the Maison Commune in Marseilles. Then, in Paris, he introduced him not only to Barras and his lot of politicians but also to Army contractors and those newly rich who had made their money in property deals, and so Joseph too began to join this particular racket. He bought confiscated aristocratic mansions auctioned off cheaply by the Government, and re-sold them at several times their purchase price. Etienne explained to me that this type of business is flourishing now because of the housing shortage. Within a short time Joseph had made enough money to buy a little house for himself and Julie in the Rue du Rocher.
When news of the victories in Italy came – the victories of Millesimo, Castiglione, Areola and Rivoli – Joseph’s standing in Paris at once improved tremendously. After all, wasn’t he the elder brother of that General Bonaparte whom the foreign papers call ‘the strong man of France’ and our own the ‘liberator of the Italian people’, of that man whose lean face now adorns coffee cups, flower vases and snuff-boxes in all the shop windows? On one side of these cups, vases and boxes you can see him in glossy paint, partnered on the other side by the French flag. No wonder that the Government at once acceded to the request of its most successful General and appointed Joseph Ambassador!
Joseph and Julie moved into their first Italian marble palace. Julie was very wretched there and wrote in despair to ask if I couldn’t come and join them, and Mama agreed. And since then I have been moving round the country with them from one palace to another, living in dreadfully high-ceilinged rooms with floors of black-and-white tiles and sitting about in pillared courts full of innumerable fountains whose curious bronze figures squirt their water from all sorts of apertures.
The palazzo we inhabit at present is called the Palazzo Corsini. All the time we are surrounded by clanking spurs and rattling sabres because Joseph’s staff consists of nothing but officers. And to-morrow is the day of the biggest reception which Joseph has given so far, a reception for the 350 most important citizens of Rome. For the last week Julie has not been able to sleep; her face is as white as a sheet and there are black rings under her eyes. Julie, you see, belongs to the type of women who are all of a dither if they have only four guests for dinner. But every day we are at least fifteen at table now, and on top of that Joseph arranges receptions for hundreds of people every few seconds. Although a whole battalion of flunkeys, cooks and chambermaids buzzes through the house Julie feels solely responsible for the whole affair and hangs round my neck at short intervals sobbing and moaning that most certainly everything would be in a sorry mess. In that respect she’s Mama’s true daughter.
Duphot has moved again. For one second I had hoped that he would regain consciousness, for in that one second he looked at me with clear eyes. But almost immediately after they clouded over once more, and now he is fighting for breath again, spitting blood and sinking deeper and deeper into the pillows. What wouldn’t I give, Jean Pierre Duphot, if I could help you! But I can’t.
In spite of battles and victories and peace treaties and the making of new States, Napoleon found time to keep an eye on his family. From the very beginning of his Italian campaign his couriers brought money and letters to Madame Letitia in Marseilles. He made her move into a better house and send Jerome, that street urchin, to a decent school. For Caroline he found a very exclusive girls’ boarding-school in Paris, the very school where his step-daughter Hortense de Beauharnais receives her education. Well, well, how the Bonapartes have gone up in the world! And how furious Napoleon was because his mother had allowed his sister Eliza to marry a certain Felix Bacciochi! Why this hurry, he wrote, and why, of all men, this lazy hopeless wastrel of a music student, this Bacciochi?
Eliza
What I did not understand and what I found rather disagreeable was the fact that Napoleon, in the middle of all the world history he was making, had not forgotten me either. He seemed to have taken it into his head that he had to make amends to me for something or other. And so in complicity with Julie and Joseph he sent men along as candidates for my hand in marriage. The first to arrive was Junot, his former adjutant in his Marseilles days. One day Junot, tall, fair and charming, arrived in Genoa, steered me into the garden and clicked his heels. ‘I have the honour,’ he said, ‘to ask you to marry me.’ ‘No, thank you,’ I answered. ‘But it was Napoleon’s order,’ he good-naturedly insisted, and I remembered what Napoleon had thought of Junot: ‘a loyal man, but stupid’. I shook my head and he rode back to headquarters.
The next candidate was Marmont, whom I had also known in Marseilles. Marmont did not ask me directly but hinted at it with delicacy. Again I remembered what Napoleon had said about his friends. This one, he judged, wanted to be in on his, Napoleon’s, career. There Joseph Bonaparte’s sister-in-law would certainly serve this purpose well, I thought. It meant being a member of Napoleon’s family, even doing Napoleon a service and incidentally marrying a handsome dowry. I answered Marmont’s delicate hints with a ‘no’ just as delicately embroidered. But after he had gone I complained about it to Joseph. Couldn’t he write to Napoleon and tell him to spare me the marriage proposals of his staff officers?
‘Don’t you understand,’ said Joseph, ‘that Napoleon considers it a distinction for one of his Generals to be married to his sister-in-law’s sister?’
‘I am not a medal to be awarded to a deserving officer,’ I objected, ‘and if this sort of thing doesn’t stop I’m going back to Mama.’
This morning Julie and I were sitting, in spite of the cool weather, in the pillared court of our palazzo. For the thousandth time Julie and I were studying the names of the Italian families of the high aristocracy who were to come to the Embassy tomorrow night. Joseph joined us there. He was holding a letter in his hand and talked casually about this and that, as is usual with him whenever something that he finds unpleasant has happened. Suddenly he said:
‘Napoleon has seen to it that we get a new military attaché. General Jean Pierre Duphot, a very charming young man.’
I looked up. ‘Duphot? Didn’t a General Duphot report to you once in Genoa?’
Joseph was pleased. ‘Of course,’ he exclaimed, ‘and he made quite an impression on you if I remember right, didn’t he? Because, you see, Napoleon writes that he hopes that Eugenie – please forgive me, he still speaks of Eugenie instead of Désirée – that you would take pity on this very lonely young man. And therefore …’
I got up. ‘Another marriage candidate? No, thank you! I had thought that that was really over and done with.’ Going to the door I turned round to them: ‘Write to Napoleon at once that he is not to send this Duphot or whatever his name is on any account.’
‘But he’s here already! He arrived a quarter of an hour ago and brought Napoleon’s letter.’
I was furious and banged the door to behind me. I like banging doors. In these marble palaces it sounds like an explosion.
I didn’t go down for lunch, to escape Duphot. But I put in an appearance for the evening meal. It’s too boring to eat by yourself in your room. Of course, they had given the young man the seat next to me. Like a slave Joseph always does exactly as Napoleon wishes.
The young man didn’t get more than a few cursory glances from me. I had an impression of a man of medium height with a big mouth horribly full of white teeth. These white teeth irritated me because he kept laughing at me all the time.
Our conversation was frequently interrupted. We are used to people standing about in crowds outside the Embassy and shouting ‘Evviva la Francia! Evviva la Libertà!’ all the time, with an occasional ‘Abbasso la Francia!’ mixed in. Most Italians are enthusiastic about the ideas that our Revolution and our Army have brought to them. But the heavy costs of our occupation and the fact that all their officials are appointed by Napoleon seem to embitter many. At all events, to-night the noise outside sounded different from other nights, louder and more menacing.
Joseph told us why. Last night some Roman citizens had been arrested as hostages because a French Lieutenant had been knifed and killed in a tavern brawl. And now a deputation of the Town Council of Rome was waiting outside to speak to Joseph. An enormous crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings.
‘Why don’t you see them?’ asked julie. ‘We could have waited with the meal.’
Joseph explained – and the gentlemen of his staff nodded their agreement – that that was quite out of the question. He wasn’t going to see anybody, because the whole affair was no business of his but that of the Military Governor of Rome and had been the Governor’s from the very beginning.
Meanwhile the noise outside kept growing, and finally there were blows on the door.
At that Joseph shouted:
‘My patience is at an end. I’ll have the mob dispersed. Go to Military Headquarters,’ he told one of his secretaries, ‘and demand that the square outside the Embassy be cleared. I can’t stand that din any longer.’
The secretary left, and General Duphot called after him: ‘Better be careful and go out by the back door!’
We continued our meal in silence. Before we had reached the coffee stage we heard the sound of horses. So they had sent a battalion of hussars in order to clear the square. Joseph got up at once and we went with him outside on to the balcony on the first floor.
The place below looked like a witch’s cauldron. There were thousands and thousands of heads, and thousands and thousands of voices clamouring stridently. We couldn’t see the Council Deputation anywhere. The excited mob must have pressed it against the portico of the house. The two sentries down there were standing motionless outside their boxes, and I had the impression that at any moment the crowd would trample them into the mud. Joseph made us all go back quickly into the room, where we pressed our faces against the panes of the high windows. He was as pale as death and kept chewing his lower lip, and his hand trembled as it played nervously with his hair.
The hussars had surrounded the square. Like statues they sat on their horses, rifles at the ready, waiting for the order. But their commander was apparently still undecided about it.
‘I’ll go down and try to reason with the crowd,’ Duphot said.
‘It’s useless, General, don’t do it,’ said Joseph imploringly. ‘Don’t expose yourself to the danger. Our hussars will …’
Duphot smiled and showed his white teeth. ‘I am a soldier, Your Excellency, and used to danger. Besides, I’d like to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.’
And so, his spurs clanking, he went to the door. Before he reached it he turned round and, if you please, tried to catch my eye! I turned quickly away towards the window. So that’s what it was: for my sake he indulged in this piece of bravado! In order to impress me he went down to face the raging mob unarmed and alone.
‘How senseless,’ I thought, ‘how senseless! Junot, Marmont, Duphot, what have I got to do with them?’
At that moment the door was being opened downstairs. We opened the window a fraction in order to hear better. The clamour grew weaker, but it sounded as threatening as before. Someone yelled: ‘Abbasso …!’ and once more: ‘Abbasso …!’ We couldn’t see Duphot yet. Then the crowd withdrew some way to make room for him, and he came into view raising his hands to ask for silence
I rushed out of the room and down the stairs and tore the door open. The two sentries had picked up General Duphot, holding him up under the arms. His legs dangled lifelessly to the ground, his face with the twisted mouth hung to one side, and his eternal smile was frozen to a grin. He had lost consciousness. The two soldiers dragged him into the hall and his spurs clanked as his legs trailed over the marble tiles.
‘Take him upstairs!’ I heard myself say. ‘We’ll have to put him somewhere upstairs.’ As I was saying this, white distraught faces appeared around me: Joseph, Julie, the fat Councillor to the Embassy, and Minette, Julie’s chambermaid. They made room for the two soldiers to carry Duphot up the stairs. Outside all had become quiet. Two salvoes from the hussars had been enough.
I opened the door to Joseph’s study, which was nearest to the staircase. There the two sentries laid Duphot on a sofa and I pushed some cushions under his head. Joseph, who was standing by my side, said that he had sent for a doctor and that perhaps it mightn’t be as bad as it looked.
I saw a damp stain on his dark-blue uniform in the region of his stomach.
‘Open his tunic, Joseph,’ I said, and Joseph obeyed with clumsy and nervous fingers. There was a light red circle of blood on his white shirt.
‘A stomach wound,’ said Joseph.
The General’s face had turned yellow and there was a jerky kind of sob coming from his wide-open mouth. At first I thought he was crying, till I realised that he was fighting for breath.
When the Italian doctor, a thin and shortish man, arrived he was even more wrought up than Joseph. It seemed to have been a great stroke of luck for him to be called to the French Embassy. He said at once that he was a great admirer of the French Republic and of General Napoleon Bonaparte and, as he was opening Duphot’s shirt, he mumbled something about these regrettable incidents to-day and about irresponsible elements at the bottom of them.